This Web site can foretell the future for dropouts

Published 5:30 am, Monday, June 1, 2009

Being in the words business, I’ve always disliked that expression that a picture is worth a thousand of them. But sometimes it’s true.

The Common Good Forecaster is one example. It’s a new Web site that lets you see, through various statistics and graphs, the estimated impact of an education-starved society on factors from life expectancy to the prison population.

The cradle-to-prison pipeline is becoming an increasingly popular phrase to describe the ultimate effects of things such as poverty and a poor education. But this web site, a joint project of the United Way of America and New York-based nonprofit American Human Development Project, illustrates the problem by linking those effects directly to the various levels of education in our population.

The user-friendliness of the site is enhanced by the fact that users can narrow searches to state and, for some categories, to county levels. It’s a particularly important tool in the Houston area, where, on the issue of education, Rice sociologist Stephen Klineberg likes to say: “We’re doing better than we have been. And we’re doing abysmally badly by all the standards that matter.”

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Fewer crimes

Here in Harris County, the site reports that 24 percent of the population hasn’t graduated from high school, which is probably better than reality. The site says a quarter did graduate or earned a GED and another quarter have some college or an associate’s degree. About 27 percent have at least a college degree.

But what would happen if we could bump everyone up one educational level? The site’s projections show we’d live longer: Life expectancy jumps nearly two years to 79.3.

We’d earn more: Median personal income hops 26 percent from $31,888 to $40,373. More of us would have jobs: The ranks of the unemployed would shed about 23,613 workers.

We’d have more money: About 122,246 fewer people would live in poverty. We’d vote more: We’d pack in to the polls about 199,813 more voters in the next presidential election.

We’d be safer: The murder rate would drop by more than half, from 10.3 murders per 100,000 people to 4.8. The change, according to the site, would mean an estimated 203 fewer murders annually.

Statewide, our adults would be thinner: The ranks of the obese would drop by more than a half a million. But our babies would be bigger: We’d see 1,200 fewer born at low birth-weights.

And fewer of them would go on to commit crimes. Since nearly three-quarters of state inmates did not complete high school and fewer than 3 percent finished college, the site reports, bumping everyone in Texas up an education level could result in a 65 percent drop in the rate of incarceration, or about 106,892 fewer adult prisoners.

‘Hand-holding’ helps

The numbers and projections are only rough estimates. In some cases, such as the figures for dropouts, the rate is probably much higher.

Bob Sanborn, president and CEO of Children At Risk, said his group recently used data it collected over six years to calculate the percentage of Harris County dropouts. The group came up with 41 percent, far above the site’s 24 percent.

“You always hope that people see that they earn more money, that they do better in life the more education they have,” he said.

But, more than statistics, he said, what really works with at-risk populations is, for lack of a better word, “hand-holding.” That means programs like Project Grad that provide support and encouragement from an adult that may be lacking at home.

The real value of the Forecast web site is in the education it provides on the systemic significance of education.

Maybe we’ll recall some of the stats and their link to either harm or hope.

Maybe the numbers will linger on our minds the next time we weigh our feelings on initiatives and reforms that can make a difference. Like expanding access to preschool, lengthening school days, supporting magnet schools and putting the focus in our classrooms back on learning and less on standardized tests that can bore borderline students into dropping out.

United Way of Houston President and CEO Anna Babin said the site offers a tool that hasn’t really been widely available before.

“I don’t think it’s ever been really concentrated in one place, that someone could see the total picture,” she said. “I don’t think the general population fully understands how everything is very connected.”